U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin waves to supporters after making a victory speech Tuesday in Madison. Baldwin beat former Gov. Tommy Thompson in the race for Wisconsin's U.S. Senate seat.

Politics can be strange and political power can be fleeting. If there is anything we have learned from the last few election cycles, it should be that the gains parties make on election nights can easily be swept away by political gridlock, grassroots opposition and plain old circumstances.

President Barack Obama's decisive victory in 2008 was undercut by the severity of the economic crisis and the political power of the tea party. Gov. Scott Walker's win in 2010 gave rise to protests and a recall movement in Wisconsin that came to define our state's political year. Both men succeeded in implementing large parts of their agenda. Both sustained serious political damage in doing so.

And now, it seems, there has been another turn in the mood of Wisconsin voters. The same state that in June rejected the Republican Walker's recall on Tuesday voted to re-elect Obama, a Democrat.

Perhaps more surprising than that is the way Wisconsin voters swung from electing the very conservative Ron Johnson to the U.S. Senate in 2012 to the very liberal Tammy Baldwin in 2012. Johnson and Baldwin will give Wisconsin one of the most politically mismatched U.S. Senate delegations in the country. Maybe that's a symbol of the polarization that's happening broadly in the electorate.

Other key outcomes in Tuesday's contests that matter to north central Wisconsin:

? Congress. In the 7th Congressional District, U.S. Rep. Sean Duffy on Tuesday achieved a convincing victory in his re-election campaign. On the morning after Election Day, 2010, we wrote in this space that "Duffy has made a significant pledge not to be a straight party-line (politician). It is reasonable for any voter - but especially the district's independent voters, who don't consider themselves party-line poeple, either - to pay attention to this pledge."

The same still applies, perhaps even more so now that the Weston Republican no longer will be a freshman lawmaker. There are big policy areas in Washington where bipartisan agreement seems potentially within reach - tax reform, deficit reduction, education, even immigration - but it will require lawmakers willing to take a risk, and perhaps to question some of their party's sacred-cow assumptions.

? State Senate. At the state level, the election of Rep. Tom Tiffany, R-Hazelhurst, in the 12th Senate District returned control of the state Senate to Republican hands. State power, in other words, is in the same place it was at the beginning of 2011. And yet no one, including us, expects another bitterly divided, tumultuous session like the ones we saw in the last two years. Certainly we all at least hope for something different.

Part of the reason we don't think the state will be torn apart again is because Madison legislators' jobs are likely to be easier in the next two years than they were in the last two. In fact, this might be related to the reason Wisconsin voted for Obama's re-election. The economy here is growing. The state is seeing revenues back in its coffers. The decisions legislators face in the next term are more likely to be where to begin to restore funding than where to cut it.

Still, they have a big job ahead of them. Wisconsin's economy is not yet strong. And we can't afford to have Madison devolve into division and partisan game-playing, and risk the fragile economic gains we've made.

? Weston. And in Weston, voters rejected two tax propositions that would have funded public transportation. This presents the village with a serious budget problem, and it may well subject residents to real cuts in public services. At a minimum, the village now faces big challenges in months ahead.

In all these races, the voters have spoken. Now it's time for our leaders, newly elected or re-elected, to get to work.

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Our View: Wisconsin voters signal a shift in mood, again

Politics can be strange and political power can be fleeting.

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